Geometric Satake, Springer correspondence and small representations (Q387649)

The main goal of this extend paper is to give a geometric explanation of the problem posed by Ginzburg of finding a geometric interpretation of Broer's covariant theorem in the context of geometric Satake. For a simply-connected simple algebraic group \(G\) over \(\mathbb{C}\), the authors show a subvariety of its affine Grassmannian \(\mathbf{Gr}\) that is closely related to the nilpotent cone \(\mathcal{N}\) of \(G\), generalizing a well-known result about \(\mathrm{GL}_n\). By using this subvariety, they construct a sheaf-theoretic functor that leads, when combined with the geometric Satake equivalence and the Springer correspondence, to a geometric explanation for a number of known facts, previously obtained by Broer and Reeder, about small representations of the dual group. As the main result, they prove that there is an action of \(\mathbb{Z} / 2 \mathbb{Z}\) on \(\mathcal{M}\) commuting with the \(G\)-action, and a finite \(G\)-equivariant map \(\mathcal{M} \mapsto \mathcal{N}\) that induces a bijection between \(\mathcal{M} / (\mathbb{Z} / 2 \mathbb{Z})\) and a certain closed subvariety \(\mathcal{N}_{sm}\) of \(\mathcal{N}\), where \(\mathbf{Gr}_{sm}\) is the closed subvariety of \(\mathbf{Gr}\) corresponding to small representation under geometric Satake and \(\mathcal{M} \in \mathbf{Gr}\) is the intersection of \(\mathbf{Gr}_{sm}\) with the opposite Bruhal cell.